Review chapter 2 The route to normal science

Thomas S Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Normal science is defined as a research firmly based upon one or more past
scientific achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for
a time supplying the foundation for its further practice. The achievements who
shared two essential characteristics ( sufficiently unprecedented and open-ended)
are referred as paradigms.
The paradigms formations of physical optics are scientific revolutions, and the
successive transition from one paradigm to another through revolution is the usual
developmental pattern of a mature science. If the historian will trace the scientific
knowledge of any selected group of a related phenomena backward in time, it is
likely to be observed that some minor variant of pattern are encountered illustrated
from the history of physical optics.
Excluding fields like mathematics, physics or astronomy, in which the first
paradigm dates from prehistory and also those as biochemistry, that arose by
divisions and recombination of specialties already matured, the situations outlined
are historically typical; the history suggests some reasons for the difficulties
encountered because in the absence of a paradigm or some candidate of a
paradigm, all of the facts that could possibly pertain to the development of a certain
science are likely to seem equally relevant. Moreover, in the absence of a reason to
seeking some particular form or more recondite information, early fact-gathering is
usually restricted to the wealth of data that lie ready to hand.
No natural history can be interpreted in the absence of at least some implicit
body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief that permits selection,
evaluation and criticism. If the body of belief is not already implicit in the collection
of facts in which case more than mere facts are at hand- it must be externally
supplied, perhaps by a current metaphysic, by another science, or by personal and
historical accident. The uniqueness come from the degree of the field it is called
science and that sich initial divergences should ever largely disappear.

In order to be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its

competitors, but it not needs, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with
which it can be confronted.
The new paradigm implies a new and more rigid definition of the field, those
unwilling or unable to accommodate their work to it must proceed in isolation or
attach themselves to some other groups. In the science, the formation of
specialized journals, the foundation of specialists societies and the claim for a
special place in the curriculum have usually been associated with a groups first
reception of a single paradigm.
So, the individual scientist can take a paradigm for granted and to attempt to
build his field anew, starting from the first principle and justifying the use of each
concept introduced. The result will usually appear as brief articles addressed only to
professional colleagues, the men whose knowledge of a shared paradigm can be
assumed and who prove to be the only ones able to read the papers addressed to
them.
The first who took the foundation of their field for granted were the electricians
from that point they pushed on to more concrete and recondite problems, and
increasingly they then reported their results in articles addressed to other
electricians rather than in books addressed to the learned world.

Elena Nichifor,
Group number 2